


Electric Heart

by musiquetta



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Robot Repairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 22:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3306254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiquetta/pseuds/musiquetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David is a mechanic on the Avengers Space Station. One of his 'patients' keeps coming in with the most bizarre stories and distracting green eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Electric Heart

**Author's Note:**

> For [asgardianarcher](http://asgardianarcher.tumblr.com/).

 

“Just finishing up this software compatibility check for your new joints” David says while setting some options on his screen, which promptly spits out data before lighting up. “and you're good to go.”

 

He reached for the cables sticking out of the androids wrists, carefully unplugging them while avoiding the unnaturally green eyes resting on him.

 

The T-06 immediately wriggles his fingers and twists his wrists which give off a faint chafing sound.

 

“Once the oil's warmed up the sound will be gone.” David supplies, checking off some things in the incident report he's required to fill out for every single one of the ridiculous amount of accidents this particular android has.

 

“I know, I know.” the T-06 says. “It's not the first time I've busted my extremities to hell. But you've done excellent, as usual.”

 

“Speaking of,” David says, ignoring the leery grin his 'patient' gives him. “could you at least try not to undo my 'excellent' work inside a week?”

 

“No promises.” Tommy says, his white hair glows ethereally in the cold blue light of David's computer screen. “I mean, someone has to reach down the garbage chute and my parts are a lot easier to replace.”

 

“That's easy for you to say.” David mumbles and Tommy laughs, jumping off the table. The movement is effortless, graceful, and the mechanic inside David marvels at the thought that it's all metal, wiring, software communicating perfectly – outside the glowing green eyes and the connection ports inside the skin, almost invisible, except to the trained eye, the android looks like any other human aboard the Avengers Space Station.

 

“Anyway, thank you, David.” the robot says.

 

“You're welcome, T-06.” he replies, absently, mind already resting on his further tasks, the blasted schematics for the new solar flare defense mechanism that's been giving him nightmares.

 

“Tommy.” the android says, tearing David from his thoughts. He looks up from his computer screen and into bright green eyes. “My name is Tommy.”

 

“Alright,” David says. It's a surefire way to a headache, his A.I. professor used to say, to try and understand the workings of an artificial mind. “then you're welcome, Tommy.”

 

Tommy is grinning at a joke David doesn't get and as he does his skin slides over the metal underneath, as always when he laughs and David almost reaches out to touch it.

 

(He has no reason to, though. He knows what synthetic epidermis feels like.)

 

David clears his throat. “And stay out of trouble.” he adds, which prompts a laugh from Tommy, loud this time.

 

“If the mechanics weren't so cute,” Tommy drawls. “I'd have actual incentive to do that.”

 

David hears, rather than sees, Tommy's hypersonic gears kick into action and he's gone before David had the time to blush, which is rather a blessing, actually.

 

He doesn't have time to follow the train of thought of a quantum computation brain, especially not one as erratic as this one.

 

Later, the circuitry blurs in front of David’s eyes as he leans even closer to the motherboard he’d been tinkering with, the light of the soldering iron sending sparks dancing in front of his eyes.

 

Groaning, he sets his tools aside and takes another look at these plans Iron Man had dropped off last week with a throwaway comment on how the Avengers Space Station expected an increase in solar flares from nearby stars and some reinforcements for their shielding “the details of which too much of a hassle to figure out for someone as busy as _him_ , but just the right thing for the 'youngsters going places' to make a name for themselves”.

 

David only vaguely recalled the joy and pride he had felt the first time Stark called him a ‘youngster going places’. Countless nightshifts and headaches had seen to that.

 

The man might be a genius and all, but his thought process was more jumpy than a maintenance bot under a 1000 Volts and understanding them was not a pleasure.

 

Plus, the occasional crude sketch of fellow team members smack in the middle of the schematics isn't doing David's concentration any favors.

 

All in all, the plans seems more absinthe-induced ravings of a mad man instead of yet another technological revolution in the making.

 

Two days later he still makes the most sense of the odd rude sketch of Captain America poledancing around a transistor – and all this after hours of his regular mechanic work to pay the bills.

 

He needed a day off or three.

 

A sharp whistle momentarily jerks him out of his misery. America stands in the open door of the workshop, her jumpsuit half down and tied around her waist, hair still up in a messy bun with two bottles of beer clenched in her hands.

 

“You’re having a beer with us.” she states, jerking her head towards their kitchen where laughter rings through the mostly empty corridors of the maintenance sector.

 

“Thanks, but I really need to get on with this.” David says without contemplating any other options; at this point his brain is so mushy he might actually say yes and fall further behind schedule than he already was.

 

“I don’t recall asking, chico. You push yourself anymore and drop dead, who do you think gets stuck with your extra work?” she says and leaves him alone. Suddenly his dark little work room seem very, very empty.

 

David sighs and rubs his eyes. Maybe a break was what he needed to get on with this terrible circuitry that made no sense.

 

At the very least a beer might help get the tiny dancing Caps out of his mind.

 

His back gives an awful strings of cracks as he stands for the first time in – he doesn’t really know how long, but hours, definitely.

 

Their steps ring through the empty steel corridors as they walk towards the raucous kitchen, where Teddy and Nate are sitting around the heat lamp.

 

Kate is there, too, though that is no surprise; these days Kate is around more often than not. That is, whenever she's not away for the Avengers training courses. David is only mildly jealous. After all, he was on the fast track to the Stark R&D team – unless he never figures out these plans, that is.

 

“I thought you’d grown roots on that chair.” Teddy greets him and reaches behind his chair to pull out a beer. David sits next to him and takes the offered bottle. It's cool against his palm and makes him suddenly aware of the ache in his wrist.

 

“It was a pretty close call.” David takes the first sip. He is suddenly acutely aware of how thirsty he is and has a hard time not emptying the whole bottle at once; that’d certainly spoil his plan of getting up and back to his work in two hours, tops.

 

“So, I heard you had a visitor the other day.” Kate says with a wolfish grin. “Or should I say, a regular?”

 

David frowns as America laughs and puts an arm around Kate’s shoulders. David doesn’t like where this is going – not that he doesn’t like America laughing, theoretically he does, but let’s just say he’s heard this one before.

 

“I don’t know what you mean.” David says and takes another sip from his bottle – quite a larger one than he planned, too.

 

“Y’know, the one that keeps breaking himself so he’ll get your talented fingers on his wiring?” Kate elaborates, voice ominous. Even Teddy is grinning. Hadn’t he suffered enough for today – and this week?

 

“Accidents happen.” David shrugs it off, like he always does even if it weren’t even 24 hours between two repairs of Tommy. “Else we’d be out of a job.”

 

America chuckles. “That one must have a liking for them, I think considering you probably replaced every part of him in the last six months or so.”

 

“He has a dangerous job is all. You try moving at the speeds he does and not get caught in a fan sometimes.” David mumbles into his – empty, how could it be empty? – beer.

 

America rolls her eyes. “Yeah, they built him with all that superspeed so he could keep walking into exhaust pipes and what-not. Face it, chico, you have an admirer.”

 

Kate chuckles at that and Teddy is presumably hiding his smile by turning away. David was not about to explain the correlation between high speed and malfunction – everyone present knew perfectly well it was there.

 

“Did you bring me here just so you could mock me?” David asks America, voice too high-pitched to sound as irritated as he feels after a 10-hour-shift and way too many thoughts of stupid robots who couldn’t keep their stupid extremities out of stupid fans.

 

“No, I brought you here because I worry about your health and also because I truly enjoy your company.” America deadpans, rolling her eyes. “The mocking is a bonus.”

 

“And anyway, robots mimick behaviour, they do not generate it.” David says and shrugs. “He’s probably just bulk-downloaded too many telenovelas and they interfere with his interaction protocols.” He hopes that is the last he hears of it, but then Nate looks up from where he’d been pouring over his work on the new space jet for the Avengers.

 

“One might interject that humans learn their behavior in much the same way.” he says and David almost rolls his eyes. It’s an old argument between them and between a lot of scientists. The ethics of artificial intelligence were currently the hot topic that experts and those that liked to call themselves that like to yell at each other about. “Just like a simple transistor-based machine has proven to be capable of finding new solutions given the right framework, the added capacity of quantum-based computing makes it likely, if not unavoidable for artificial intelligence to reach, if not surpass human intelligence.”

 

David feels a headache coming on and hates the way he’d probably have to bite his tongue to stop his next sentence from coming out.

 

“I know all that.” he sighs. “I just think that while there’s only theory without conclusive proof, it would be wise not to believe everything the data might suggest. Just because something is not impossible, does not mean it is likely or that it happened yet.” They fall into a steady pattern after that and really, David knows this leads nowhere except a migraine for him.

 

Nathan was always eager to believe anything, even if it sounded like something from a really obscure Scifi novel – even if David was aware that sounded ridiculous coming from someone living in a space station, sitting next to a guy who looked human, but was in fact a hybrid of two non-human species, one of which could shapeshift, but still.

 

The doors open, unnoticed in the volume of their bickering until a loud groan interrupts them. Eli stands in the doorway, blue jumpsuits covered in white debris, tool bag slung over his shoulders.

 

“If you two are gonna do this all night – again – I’m gonna turn and leave, I swear.” he grumbles and trots over to the free seat next to Kate and America.

 

“They’ll stop, I promise.” Kate says and pats the seat next to her, and that’s that. Nate turns back to his work and David didn’t care in the first place.

 

“They’ll stop, I promise.” Kate says and pats the seat next to her, and that’s that. Nate turns back to his work and David didn’t care in the first place.

 

Still the abrupt change of topic had left them with an awkward silence in their kitchen.

 

To hell with it, David thinks, he deserved a break. He gets himself another beer. It’s no less quiet when he returns from his short trip to the fridge.

 

“Hey, Eli.” Teddy says, finally and David is relieved that breaking the silence does not fall to him. “do you know that MAXIMOFF-T-06, the one with the white hair?”

 

And that’s as long as David’s relief lasts.

 

He really has to talk to Teddy about possible hard feelings about an incident involving a kiss and a flattered but disinclined Teddy, David thinks.

 

Eli grunts. “David’s boyfriend you mean?”

 

America and Kate break out laughing. Now even Eli was in on this? He didn’t even work in their shop anymore, he quit to do maintenance around the base months ago.

 

The betrayal must have been evident on his face, because Eli shrugs and throws him a look that’s sympathetic, for Eli’s standards at least. “I’ve seen him around. Who do you think fixes all that stuff he runs into? The other day I had to fix a wall he ran into so hard his face left dents. If you ask me, that one would be better off as scrap.”

 

David feels anger rising in his throat, this time really biting his tongue to keep from telling Eli exactly what he thought of that idea.

 

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Kate pipes up, voice urgent, and David suspects she saw the possibility for disaster coming. “You’ll never guess who I met today – Captain Marvel herself!” she answers, before anyone has time to guess.

 

“No way!” Teddy pipes up, getting that glazed over look he always gets when Kate talk about the heroes she gets to meet.

 

“Yes way, with the costume and everything!”

 

For the rest of the night he leaves the talking to others, too exhausted to hold much of a conversation. He excuses himself early, somehow gets through all the protests and manages to reach his cabin before midnight.

 

As soon as his head hits the pillow, he’s wide awake, thoughts circling around earlier.

 

The theoretical possibility was there, he told himself, again – that robots actually felt everything a human can. But how would you prove it?

 

These days, no human could make sense of the actual processes going on in the quantum computing units giving modern robots the computational power to do what they did – but then again, there is no event of zero probability. That didn’t mean that David had to spend any more time on thinking about the realness of Tommy’s sentience and his flirtiness than, say, a giant pink elephant materializing right in front of him.

 

Possible didn’t mean likely, David thinks and keeps repeating that thought until he falls asleep.

 

In the morning, David regrets everything. His head is pounding and he got about three hours sleep – which is about two hours less than he needs – and he never did get back to Stark’s plans.

 

“Curse you, America.” he groans

 

He sighs and drags himself up and to work.

 

His headache grows steadily until it’s altogether unbearable by next afternoon. At least it’s quiet today, no shredded droids or annoying service bots with broad smiles and white hair, just David, these terrible plans and the pain threatening to split open his skull.

 

A knock jerks him up from where he was glaring at the schematics. He turns around to greet the customer when – his eyes narrow.

 

He knows that one.

 

David groans. “I swear, I’ll dial your pain perception so high a gentle wind will send you screaming.” he growls and Tommy laughs. At least he has the decency to look sheepish. He also looks to be entirely in order, from the way he’s sauntering into the workshop.

 

“So?” David asks, raising his eyebrows. “What did you do this time? Another virus? I told you to keep your ports out of dubious connections.” Tommy smirks at him visibly biting back a laugh. It took David a moment, but then he heard it too.

 

“Just tell me what you need.” David groans, a blush blooming on his cheeks.

 

“I’m afraid you won’t get to put your hands on me – unless you ask nicely, of course.”

 

David sputters, blushing even worse than before. “What?” he asks and thankfully it’s not as much of a squeak as he feared.

 

The robot grins. “I, ah – It’s come to my attention that I’ve been putting you through a lot, with breaking myself as often as I do.” he says, dropping himself into the empty chair opposite David.

 

“Oh.” David says, in lieu of something better to say.

 

“So I’ve come to see if there isn’t something I can do, to make up for it.”

 

What’s with the grinning, David asks himself as he tears himself away from looking at Tommy, why did robots need the ability to grin? Why did people put effort into implementing that?

 

“You could break less.” David deadpans, fiddling with the hem of his jumpsuit and Tommy laughs like David said that to be funny.

 

“No but really,” Tommy says. “is there anything I can do for you?”

 

David looks down, evading Tommy’s unnaturally green eyes. “I – I don’t think that’s protocol, I mean – I’m just doing my job.” he says and honestly, how dumb does he sound right now? Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tommy leaning forward. It takes him a few moments to realize he’s looking at the schematics still spread out over his desk.

 

David panics, slamming shut the notebook and gathering the papers together.

 

“That’s, uhm, secret, I shouldn’t have – sorry.” he mumbles, while Tommy laughs again.

 

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul. After all, I didn’t delete _all_ my sensitivity protocols.” David stills and stares at Tommy, dumbfounded.

 

“That was a joke.” Tommy explains, rolling his eyes. “I can’t alter my own code – you of all people should know that.”

 

“Right.” David says. He really needs to pull himself together and soon. “Ah – don’t you have work to do?” he remembers suddenly. Tommy shrugs.

 

“Well, technically, I am working.” he says, and there’s that smirk again. David frowns at him. “Promise not to tell on me?” the robot whispers, leaning close to David in a conspiratory manner.

 

Despite himself, he leans forward as well.

 

“Tonight my superiors will check on my workload and find that I am exactly up to par with my timetable – in fact, I am a tiny bit ahead of schedule. They think I’m running at a hundred percent capacity when, let’s be honest, that’s no fun at all, so I let them think that, while I’m only working at around 83 percent capacity.” David raises his eyebrows. He has to admit that’s quite ingenious.

 

“What about your GPS signal?” David asks, cursing his own curiosity.

 

“Yes, that ... I kind of ripped out the sensor and taped in on some electrical toy car that’s running around my work place all day.”

 

For a few moment David looks at Tommy, dumbfounded. But then he pictures the scene and just had to chuckle.

 

“I take your amusement as a sign that my secret is safe with you?” David waved. “The less you work, the less you break. Besides you’re meeting your quota and who am I to begrudge you 17 percent free time. I’d take it if I could.” That pleases Tommy, if the way his face lights up is any indicator.

 

“Which brings me back to my original purpose.” he drawls. “Since we know each other so intimately already, I think it’s time you took me on a date.”

 

“A what now?” David stares at Tommy like he’d suggested a walk on the surface of the neared star.

 

“A date, a period of time spend together by two individuals, commonly associated with romantic and/or sexual intentions.” Tommy defines with a grin, obviously enjoying this way to much for David’s liking.

 

“I, uh ...” he starts, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, but they both know this isn’t going anywhere, so Tommy just waves at him and laughs.

 

“Just think about it” he says and then tells him how he's about to sneak on some cruise that someone got him human ID for. And with that he’s gone and David sits there, seriously at a loss with himself and those stupid plans.

 

His Tommy-free time lasts all of two days. On the third, two service droids roll in carrying a powered-off Tommy with the back of his skull split wide open.

 

David has to take two deep breaths to remind himself there’s a back-up on the servers and that Tommy can’t actually die.

 

Eventually his hands stop shaking.

 

He sits Tommy up and plugs in the diagnostic wires at the side of Tommy’s neck.

 

With a groan Tommy comes to.

 

“I'm never drinking again.” his voice groans with a strange metallic ring to it. David lets out a breath he’d been holding. Tommy had probably just powered down because of his protocols managing shock situations.

 

A few of the lights at the control panel were blinking, indicating improper data feeds – but the main data core and the motherboard seem unharmed.

 

“That’s not your standardized power-up message.” David says, annoyed, though his voice is still shaking. He is walking around Tommy, starting a mental list of what is damaged. Mostly, he’s pissed of that Tommy can’t finish one week of work without critically damaging himself, but he doesn’t need to know that.

 

“I customized it.” Tommy says. “This one is way more fun.” He grins but it’s lopsided, the left side of his face void of all movement. David twists his own lips in sympathy as he adds to the list of damages as he lifts Tommy’s head up from where it keeps drooping, reminiscent of a human nodding off.

 

David frowns.

 

“Careful there, gorgeous.” Tommy teases. “If I didn’t know better I would guess that is concern on your face.”

 

“Concern for my well-earned lunch break, maybe.” David answers, still holding Tommy’s chin, blindly reaching for the scanner and holds it to Tommy’s immobile cheek. The artificial muscle underneath twitches as if electrocuted.

 

Tommy jumps, making a miserable noise between a squeak and a whine.

 

“Sorry.” David says as Tommy delicately opens his jaw under the gentle pressure of David's thumb. “I just need to find the damaged nerve feed.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s not my first time, just – warn me next time, okay?” he says grimly, preparing himself for the next blow.

 

Luckily soon after David finds the nerve giving no feedback and calls it quits. Actually, he would need to check all nerves latched onto the left side of the face, but he can’t look at Tommy’s pained face any longer. He just hopes that it’s the only one.

 

“You best lie down, this can take a while.” he says. Tommy nods and if David didn’t know better, he would say the robot looked a little green, like he was about to faint. Careful not to tangle the diagnostics cables, he helps Tommy lie down on his right side.

 

“You know,” he says as he walks around the table towards his control panel busily flashing status reports. “this might take a while and would probably be a lot more comfortable for you if you’d let me shut you off.” He’d only brought this up once before, the very first time Tommy came into his shop for repairs and Tommy had only laughed and said he wouldn’t miss a second of this.

 

But that had been minor repairs, this was huge and complicated. If David had the choice, he’d definitely take the option to wake up in a few hours, fully charged, without having to sit through this ordeal.

 

“No.” Tommy says sharply, fists clenching.

 

“Okay, okay.” David says hastily and frowns – what had put Tommy off being powered down so much? He puts one hand on Tommy’s shoulder, gently squeezing. “I won’t power you down, I promise.”

 

Tommy exhales, and relaxes again and David removes his hand to start his work.

 

“Just thought it might be easier for you is all.” he says after a while, as he’s unscrewing the plates of Tommy’s skull to set it aside. “Can’t imagine this is a nice feeling.”

 

“It’s not.” Tommy says through gritted teeth. “But it’s better than the other option.”

 

David desperately wants to ask – not that he’d ever fully understand how it would feel, to have someone quite literally screwing with your head, but he still wants to, he finds. Instead he focuses on his work, soldering severed cables and replacing sensors.

 

“How do you feel?” he asks after finishing up on the central processing section.

 

“Exposed.” Tommy deadpans and David stills for a moment, part of Tommy’s head still in his hands.

 

“Did you just – ” is all he can say before he sees the newly repaired side of Tommy’s face grins. David groans.

 

“You’re not funny.” David says as he starts screwing the first part of Tommy’s skull back to his head.

 

“Wanna bet?” Tommy drawls and curiously falls silent for a few moments. David frowns and looks at the diagnostics screen.

 

“Are you accessing joke websites via my internet connection?”

 

“No.”

 

“You’re lying, I can see you doing it, right here.” He taps the screen, spitting out lines of server connections.

 

“Are you accusing me of breaking Robotics laws? I am programmed to tell the truth.”

 

David snorts. “We both know there’s ways around that. Semantics and all that.”

 

“Why did the robot chicken cross the road?” Tommy suddenly blurts, a smile already . David raises an eyebrow. “To get to the other droid.”

 

David stops dead in his movement and groans. ”That was terrible.“

 

Tommy frowns. ”I'll take that as a challenge.”

 

“Please don't.”

 

The next hours pass with a lot of groaning from David and a lot of web traffic from Tommy. Still, David finally drilled in the last screw of Tommy’s head.

 

”There.“ he said. ”Good as new, for better or for worse.“ he said, grinning.

 

”Rude.“ Tommy sat up, swaying slightly before hopping off the table.

 

”So.“ he said with a wolfish grin. ”There’s a certain question I’m waiting to hear back on.“

 

David flushes and hides behind the computer screens, as subtle as possible

 

”Please tell me you didn’t get your skull split open just to ask me that.“ he diverts, not actually very hopeful that Tommy would actually drop it.

 

”No, that was ... an accident. Basically this shitty service droid said I totally wasn’t quick enough to run through the ventilation shafts without getting hit by the fans, so what was I supposed to do? let this piece of soldered garbage trash talk me like that?“

 

”So you ran through the ventilation shafts? The ones with the two ton fans? Spinning at what? 200 miles per hour?“

 

”That’d be the one.“

 

”And you got hit?“

 

”Grazed.“

 

”Jeez, Tommy.“ David sighs.

 

”So, about the date.“ he repears, looking at David through eerily white lashes.

 

”Tell you what.“ David says. For all that today had been filled with some of the most embarrassing and terrible jokes in the history of humankind, he had actually enjoyed himself. Tommy wasn't bad company, not for a robot. Or any sentient being, if he was being honest. ”You stay out of trouble, for, let’s say, two weeks and I’ll say yes.“

 

Tommy looks at him, eyes widened in surprise. ”Two weeks.“ he repeats thoughtfully.

 

David nods.

 

”I can do two weeks.“

 

* * *

 

Week One was mainly filled with David finally making progress on the schematics Tony gave him and at least part of him thought that that was probably because Tommy, true to his word, stayed out of his hair. As he finished one of the sketches, he suddenly remembered the joke Tommy told him, about the rabbit and the singularity this time, he did laugh.

 

Gave his heart a weird tug, too.

 

He immediately started on the next piece, pushing Tommy to the back of his mind.

 

The start of week two was slow and that never happened. But between the Avengers away on some space mission, the whole station was running on minimum activity. And so, sitting at his computer, David suddenly longed for something to do, half-wishing that somewhere else, Tommy was about to take another stupid bet somewhere, and come in with all his fingers broken or something. It was better than patching up those service droids or doing what he was currently doing -- which wasn’t much of anything.

 

Two days later some guy with silver-dyed hair walked past the shop and David was actually excited. Which was the first time David consciously realized that actually each day without Tommy was at the same time sad but also really exciting, because when they saw each other again, David would agree to the date.

 

The day after that David consciously admitted to himself that he was actually looking forward to a date with Tommy.

 

And the next day David realized, that if he didn’t have his head so far up his ass about the whole business, he could have gone to the date immediately.

 

Two days to his date-deadline he is walking up to the repair shop when he sees someone sitting in front of it, slumped against the door, clad in one of those hideously bright neon-shirts – with white hair.

 

David curses, pissed off but mostly at himself currently.

 

“You have got to be joking.” he murmurs and stomps over there, ready to yell, until he notices Tommy’s posture – slumped over and limp. He walks faster, concerned now, especially when he noticed the hole burned into the front of his shirt, charred around the edges with metal gleaming underneath.

 

The stench of burned plastic clings to Tommy's skin – a blast gun must have hit him at close range.

 

”Tommy?“ David asks, while moving closer. No reaction.

 

David tries to keep his hands from jittering, focusing on reason. He can see the memory core – what if the data is damaged?

 

Did he do a backup the last time?

 

What if his datacore was too damaged? What if he didn't have the right parts?

 

He pushes these thoughts down, instead focuses on carrying Tommy, gently putting him down on the table.

 

”What the hell did you get yourself into this time?“ David murmurs as he surveys the damage done to the interior workings of Tommy’s chest. He knows the movements by heart these days, doesn't even have to look to undo the latch at the side of Tommy’s neck and plug in the diagnostics cables.

 

The quickest way to do this would be to replace all the damaged parts now, but he had a promise to keep.

 

He had promised he wouldn't tamper with Tommy's body without the other awake.

 

But he has to unhook Tommy's central neural links to prevent Tommy doing further damage to himself. Further movement could damage even more parts. If he really had been shot, if he would be coming out of shock, who knew what defensive protocols might still be activated?

 

He typed a quick few commands into his computer and with the press of a button he initiated the boot sequence.

 

Nothing happens, he realized when even after moments the initiation, Tommy’s eyes remained still, open, unblinking, staring at the ceiling.

 

He looks dead.

 

The thought comes unbidden. Not from a place from reason, either.

 

David takes a step backwards and breathes, exhales again. He can't loose his nerves right now. When his heart rate had calmed down, he steps forward again, leaning over Tommy and bending down to scrutinize the cables.

 

A lot of debris is jammed inside, likely it was inhibiting a safe boot sequence.

 

He ran the accompanying diagnostics and started cleaning out little pieces of metal and plastic, charred and burned.

 

His back aches when he next sits up, and there's stars dancing in front of his eyes. He retypes the boot sequence with numb fingers, the whole process taking him longer than usual.

 

The screen starts spitting out line after line, complaints about missing parts flashing up in red – but the software parts don't look to bad.

 

He should be waking up soon.

 

David tears his eyes from the screen, instead leans over Tommy.

 

Surely Tommy will be scared, waking up here after whatever happened. David leans over the robot, thinking that maybe seeing a familiar face would calm him down somewhat.

 

Tommy's lashes flutter.

 

”Come on.“ David murmurs to himself, heart beating wildly against his chest.

 

”We’ve got to stop meeting like this.“ Tommy says, then his bright green eyes meet David's deep brown ones.

 

David sighs in relief. ”That is also not your boot message.“

 

”It’s yours.“ Tommy says, voice a little rough around the edges. ”I customized it. That one only plays when you’re around. Seemed appropriate, for obvious reasons.“

 

David chuckles.

 

”See?“ Tommy says. ”I’m funny.“

 

”A fool is what you are.“ David murmurs as he pushes the tray with trashed pieces and splinters he'd taken from Tommy’s open chest cavity to the side. ”Sorry about the paralysis. I woke you up as soon as I could.“ he explains.

 

Tommy looks at him, an unreadable expression on his face. This might be the longest time Tommy has ever gone without talking – while he had functioning speech protocols, that is. ”Thank you.“ he finally says.

 

”How on earth did you get yourself shot in the first place?“ David breaks the ensuing silence as he pulls out the first replacement parts from a nearby shelf.

 

“Funny story, really.” Somehow, David doubts it. “There was this advertisement for a new club, so I thought, what the hell, let's go. I had way too much free time on my hands anyway, since I cut getting bashed up from my schedule.“ Tommy frowns. ”Considering that, this is a bit ironic, isn’t it? That I still ended up here?“

 

David says nothing.

 

”So, anyway, the party. It was good, right until the shooting that is. There was this guy and he was a dick, so I was hassling him, stealing his pretzels, that kind of stuff. It’s all a bit of a blur after that but he just pulls out a gun and shoots me. He seemed surprised that I was a robot, what the hell? Would he have just shot me, then? If I was flesh and blood that would have been it.”

 

“To put it mildly.” David says.

 

“Who shoots a guy, anyway, robot or not? It's rude as hell.“ Tommy is babbling, even more than usually.

 

”And then you walked here?“ David asks.

 

”Must have. Don’t really remember it.“ Tommy falls quiet after that, letting David work in peace. The damage is superficial after all, the plasma residue of the shot had been the worst, messing with the conductivity, clogging up some air filters.

 

”I, ah, suppose I messed up that shot at a date then, huh.“ Tommy says, sheepishly.

 

”I suppose you did.“ David says, biting his cheek to keep from grinning. ”You had a good run though, you lasted twelve days. I would have given you five at most.“

 

”You wound me.“

 

”Looks like someone beat me to it.“ David said, wriggling around the completely charred capacitor he’d just screwed loose.

 

Tommy makes a face. ”Funny.“

 

David chuckles to himself. “And without server connection, too.”

 

Tommy would squirm if he could right now, David is sure of it.

 

”But I suppose,“ he continues, taking pity on the robot. ”you could always ask again and spare me the bother.“

 

Tommy raises both his eyebrows, realization dawning on his face, smile spreading on his lips.

 

David smiles back.

 

Tommy hums, looking contemplative. “I dunno. Do your job right and I just might.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I did so much worldbuilding for this, it's a damn shame I didn't find the space to cram it all in. 
> 
> Let me know what you think?


End file.
